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Why is Jordan the Goat?

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I just don't agree. They added 2 more teams right before the '96 season, which helped water down the league even further after adding 4 other teams to start the decade.

I get that, I just don't think it was as watered down as you think. A little more? Sure, but the top heavy teams were just flat out better than in '92. I think '92 was just a weak year all around.


It allowed the top teams to dominate more than ever, which is why you see the Magic, Sonic, Spurs, and Jazz with big win totals in '96. The '92 team still had to play against the Ewing/Riley Knicks, and the best Wilkins Cavs team just to get through the East.

They had better players on the better teams. The Magic beat the Bulls the previous year. This is when Shaq was at his more athletic peak, and just a man-child.

That team was no joke. They were the Shaq-Kobe, before the Shaq-Kobe, just with Penny Hardaway. Okay, not that prolific. But Penny Hardaway was a rising superstar. Shaq was already dominating the game.

And the Bulls swept them that year. There was no one in the '92 season as good as that Magic team. And I don't think the '92 team would have dismantled them like that either. They would have beaten them, but not swept them IMO.

That's how good that '96 team was. That Magic team was good enough to win it all. They just ran into a historic Bulls team with Michael Jordan.

I think the '92 team would have had improved ratings across the board if they played against the same competition as the '96 team. Obviously, both were great teams, but I'd give the edge to '92 because that's when Jordan was at his peak.

I don't disagree with this at all. Michael was at his peak then, and was overall just better.

Plus, I think Horace Grant and BJ Armstrong are very underrated as complementary pieces.

BJ is one of my favorite players. They were both very good players. Offensively they were better than Harper and Rodman. Defensively, no....

Don't underestimate Kerr on those teams. The guy was an automatically three point specialist that was very dangerous playing off Jordan Pippen.

Both teams are great, I agree. I don't think the two different eras are that lopsided though.

I think the top heavy teams were much superior to the '92 season. The bottom teams were a little worse in '96, but not dramatically worse.
 
The 87 lakers vs Jordan both games came out to about 110 to 100 points.

That was without Pippen. of course those were regular season games but Jordans championship teams would of been right in the mix with those lakers.

afteral there isn't much difference between the 86,87 and 88 lakers.

BTW the 65 Celtics had a 123 pace with an 84.2 defensive rating.

Those teams were playing that open Princeton style of offense we seeing making its way back into the NBA game and they had shooters who could hit those threes

do when looking at these match ups you gotta either take away the tthree from Chicago or project what those Celtics would of shot from the three had all their players

as reference. The ABA Kentucky Colonels 6as team shot 35% as a team from three with no college 3 point line. Dampier and Carriel both shot over 35%.

Heinsolm and Sanders were pretty legit defenders in any era.

going back to the Cousy era Celtics you have don Nelsons dream team small ball lineup that went at a 130 pace. don't think Cousy could hit those clutch threes?

My question who is ggnna keep up with Sam " the Shooter"Jones.

not to mention you have a Draymond green type guy in Tom sanders.

don't forget Tom Heinsholn won rookie of the year over Bill Russell.


Heinsohn like Russell also was a two time nba champion as a coach.

The basketball IQ of this team is off the charts,

Like I said I think Jordan could beat this team in a series but the 60' era Celtics would win that series more often.

Jordan's team wasn't getting swept by the Lakers. Agree, that it would have been interesting, and it's fun to have these debates on who beats who, etc...

I actually wonder how some of these teams would have done against Shaq and Kobe's Lakers. Those teams at one point looked invincible, as if no one stood a chance at all of beating them. I thought they were going to win 6 titles in row. Maybe they would have if Shaq took better care of himself and didn't get so fat, and eventually just broke down.

Oh yeah, and Kobe being a selfish asshole and pushing Shaq out the door.

I was in shock when the Pistons finally did beat them, but that was when Shaq had finally decline.

You could argue those Laker teams might have beaten both the Bulls and '87 Lakers. It would have been interesting at least. The Shaq and Kobe duo was down right dominant.
 
Wilt was 7ft, 275, and Russell did just fine against him.

Team-wise, yes, Russell's team was way better than Chamberlain's the majority of the time,

One on one? Meh, Russell did alright.

Chamberlain scored 50+ points seven times against Russell and also had the biggest rebounding single game that the NBA had ever seen (55) against Russell.

While these stats may not be fully complete because of the era, Wilt averaged 28.7 PPG and 28.7 RPG on 52.1% shooting against Russell in his career. Overall, Wilt averaged 30.1 PPG and 22.9 RPG on 54% shooting.

Russell definitely made him work, but there's no question that Wilt dominated him most nights on a 1v1 scale.
 
Wilt had his way with everyone, and was still dominant against Russell.

Bill Simmons tried arguing how much lower his career scoring per game was against Russell as proof that Russell was just superior, which is true homerism by him.

But their numbers rebounds, assists, field goal percentage was all basically the same against one another. Russell with just a very tiny edge. Wilt still averaged about 7.5 more points a game than Russell did. With is a large gap.

But I get what Q is staying, Russell did do a pretty good job defensively against him.

But overall, it's hard to deny Wilt was not clearly the superior player however you slice it.

Pretty good post debunking Bill's bias theory: http://billsimmonsbogusbook.blogspot.com/2013/01/debunking-debunking-myth-3-of-russell.html
 
To me the criteria is pretty simple. If we are doing a 1 on 1, and I get first pick of any prime player from any era, I'd take prime Michael Jordan against anyone.

That equals GOAT to me. Now, that could change I guess.

I grew up in virginia, was born the same year as Jordan, he went to my favorite college basketball team and then one of only two teams that you could watch every game of thanks to WGN, the other being the Hawks on TBS/TNT. I watched pretty much his entire career, saw him battle through the years it took to get to the top as well as the success he had when he got there.

If I was starting a team from scratch and could take any player at the start of their career, I take LeBron James and it's really not a tough decision either.
 
There is no way to quantify this type of argument with stats. I watched Jordan play, and I doubt I'll ever see anyone better. If they needed a basket, he got it. You couldn't stop him. And he got the shot he wanted, not the shot you gave him. And he rarely missed when it mattered. If they needed him to score 50 to win a game, he did it, without fail. If they needed him to lock down someone who caught fire, he did it. He eviscerated anyone who tried to challenge him. Once he reached his peak in '91, he and he alone determined how many titles he would win. If he would have stayed with the Bulls until he got old, and never tried baseball, they probably win nine or ten straight titles.
 
I just don't believe they beat the Rockets twice... They may get them once but truly believe Hakeem earns a title in the Jordan era regardless...Truly if there was one guy during that time (also in prime) who could have done it and dominated his position to the point where he carried his squad--- was Olajuwon....
 
It's possible, but that was still prime Jordan. He might have averaged 50 in the Finals if that's what it took. After watching what he did to the Suns for his first 3-peat, I wasn't surprised by anything he did ever again. Hell, he averaged 41 a game in that Suns series.
 
Yea but instead of Battling Ewing and Shaq in the finals-- Olajuwon might have averaged 55 against Luc Longley
 
Bulls - Magic Game 6 in 1995 was on NBA TV on Saturday. Bulls were up 8 with under 3 minutes to go.

Some points during the game stood out to me:

1:27:20 Buechler gets flagrant fouled by Penny Hardaway. Looked pretty soft to me by today's standards. Yet you always here about how much less physical you can be to draw a flagrant in today's game. That play happens to LeBron every other game and it's never flagrant.

1:28:25 Holy crap - LeBron has never once gotten that call. Looked like perfect defensive position to me.

1:31:35 illegal defense - way easier to clog the lane today based on that call.

MJ is pretty damn tenacious on the ball defender, but wears himself out and has to come out with around 6 minutes to go.

1:39:20 Kukoc bringing that foreign flop game before it was a thing

Jordan generally seems too tired to do anything at all in the last 3 minutes of the game. He air balls a jumper with about a minute to go and up 1. He's sitting on the bench looking exhausted with 42 seconds to go. Maybe his stamina was not what it would have been if he hadn't come back from baseball.

He passes the ball to Luc Longley, who misses a layup with about 30 seconds to go.

MJ passes again with 18 seconds to go into a crowd of Magic, and turns the ball over. Game over at that point essentially.

I can only imagine the beating LeBron would take if this game occurred today. Up 8, under 3 minutes to go, don't score again, and blow the game.

Now, I'm not discrediting Jordan for his amazing career accomplishments, but I can't say I've ever heard about Jordan's disappearance in an elimination game in the ECF.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWVRcJfkV7k
 
I can only imagine the beating LeBron would take if this game occurred today. Up 8, under 3 minutes to go, don't score again, and blow the game.

LeBron wouldn't have spent a year and a half playing baseball up until a couple of months before that game.
 
Yea but instead of Battling Ewing and Shaq in the finals-- Olajuwon might have averaged 55 against Luc Longley

You could be right. But Longley battled those guys too. He was a stiff on offense, but he could guard other centers. Obviously, we don't know what would have happened. I just would have expected Jordan to find a way to beat whoever was in front of him.
 
Bulls - Magic Game 6 in 1995 was on NBA TV on Saturday. Bulls were up 8 with under 3 minutes to go.

Some points during the game stood out to me:

1:27:20 Buechler gets flagrant fouled by Penny Hardaway. Looked pretty soft to me by today's standards. Yet you always here about how much less physical you can be to draw a flagrant in today's game. That play happens to LeBron every other game and it's never flagrant.

1:28:25 Holy crap - LeBron has never once gotten that call. Looked like perfect defensive position to me.

1:31:35 illegal defense - way easier to clog the lane today based on that call.

MJ is pretty damn tenacious on the ball defender, but wears himself out and has to come out with around 6 minutes to go.

1:39:20 Kukoc bringing that foreign flop game before it was a thing

Jordan generally seems too tired to do anything at all in the last 3 minutes of the game. He air balls a jumper with about a minute to go and up 1. He's sitting on the bench looking exhausted with 42 seconds to go. Maybe his stamina was not what it would have been if he hadn't come back from baseball.

He passes the ball to Luc Longley, who misses a layup with about 30 seconds to go.

MJ passes again with 18 seconds to go into a crowd of Magic, and turns the ball over. Game over at that point essentially.

I can only imagine the beating LeBron would take if this game occurred today. Up 8, under 3 minutes to go, don't score again, and blow the game.

Now, I'm not discrediting Jordan for his amazing career accomplishments, but I can't say I've ever heard about Jordan's disappearance in an elimination game in the ECF.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWVRcJfkV7k
Sort of diminishes the whole"warriors success is tainted because refs" argument..

People forget. Only cavs fans, before what just happened, would bitterly point out their bullshit while everyone would call curry Jordanesque
 
As a Cavaliers fan the correct answer here is that Jordan won every title the league and the refs wanted him to win. He was "DWhistle" decades before "DWhistle".

No matter how terrible he was shooting in a particular game, the dude would drive the lane, run in to someone, and the refs would send him to the line.

And of course he committed a clear offensive foul on one of his most famous shots against the Jazz.

....

Was he the GOAT of the '90's? Yeah, he sure was.

....

But I wish everybody would just leave it at that.

Best of his era.

Let me give you another example....

We don't look back and think of Bill Russell as an offensive power house. We hear about his defense, we see his rebounding numbers, but his PPG were never all that high, and his FG% was low.

In fact his career FG% was just 44%.

But did you ever look at what other guys shot back then?

Bill was giving up his offense to teammates, and guys like good ole Tommy Heinsohn were leading the Celtics in scoring some years while shooting 42.9% from the field. Heck, Bill finished 2nd in the league in FG% one season shooting a blistering 45.7%.

The difference between Bill and Wilt was Bill realized he didn't have to do everything and in fact shouldn't do everything to help his team win. Wilt did play with talent ... he just didn't know how to step back and let them shine.

Bill was taller and more athletic than his peers and he dominated them, much like Wilt would when he entered the league, much like Michael would do, Shaq would do, and LeBron would do. It's the just the way the league has progressed over the years.

They should dominate, and they did dominate.

Just keep them in their era.
 
Last week I almost bought Air Jordan 1s.

air-jordan-1-retro-high-og-chicago-white-black-varsity-red-012234_1.jpg





But when I tried them on, damn, those kicks are stiff! Anyone who could play like MJ did, while wearing them, has got to be the Greatest!
 

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